How to Thrive in the Capitol Wasteland
by Quellan Thyde
Summary: This week, a history teacher has a nasty run-in with legacy technology.
1. A Good Beginning Spoiled

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_Wait..._

_What's going on?_

_Bright! Too bright..._

_Where am I? What – OWWW! Asshole! What're you slapping me for? Stop it!_

_Damn right put me down. That hurt! Where do you get off – Hey, who are you? Are you the one in charge here?_

MAN: Let's see... Are you a boy or a girl?

_Huh? First of all, that's not what I asked. Second: I'm thirty seconds old! I don't even know what those words mean!_

MAN: It's a boy? A boy! We've got a son, Catherine! A beautiful, healthy baby boy!

CATHERINE: Oh.. Oh, James... We did it... A son. A beautiful son...

_Oh. Hey there. Didn't see you before, what with your splayed knees in the way and all. Do you know what's going on here?_

JAMES: You've got a bright future ahead of you, son. I'm sure of it. Look at you, look at you!

_You've got a bad habit of interrupting my conversations, bud. Why don't you tell me who you are before I decide to take a green squirt all over your nice white coat?_

JAMES: Hi there. I'm your daddy, little guy. Da-ddy.

_Oh. Da-ddy. I don't really know what that means, either, but it makes me feel kinda warm inside. Kinda good. Daddy. You're Daddy._

JAMES: You're going to need a name, aren't you? Your mother and I have been talking.

_Mother? Oh, you mean splay-leg lady. That's a warm name, too. Mother. My mother._

We've been trying to come up with the perfect name for you. It's taken a while, but we finally found one that's right.

_A name, huh? Well, I suppose it's better than being called Hey You my whole life. You seem like nice folks. I bet you got me a really good name?_

JAMES: Would you like to tell him, dear?

CATHERINE: I'm still a little woozy from the epidural, James. You tell him.

_Yeah, a good name. A really bitching name. Something that will strike fear into all who oppose my claim over this world. Jethro Swordmaster, that should be my name. Or Rambo McAsskicker. Maybe I should just go with a single name, like Gundam. Yeah, Gundam rules. I wanna be Gundam._

What do you think about... John Edgar Gray?

_...WHAT?_

That's a good name, don't you think? Fits you perfectly.

_What in the Holy Hell? What kind of world-bestriding name is that? John Edgar Gray? __That's the name of a middle-school English teacher. I don't even know what that is, and I know that I don't like it!_

MOM: It's perfect, James. I know he loves it.

_Don't encourage the man! _

JAMES: Looks like they've finished the gene projection. Let's see what you'll look like when you're all grown up.

_And don't you change the subj-- Oh, what's this bright and shiny thing? A picture-box? That's a neat idea. I'd sure like one of these for myself. Say, who's this person I'm looking at? He seems kinda dweeby._

You're going to look a lot like your dad. See that, Catherine?

MOM: Oh... Very strapping. Heh heh.

_Is.. Is that me? Me, with the big ears and the huge nose and one eyebrow? Something here doesn't seem right. It's not the face I'd choose, but then again I'm only three minutes old. What do I know about aesthetics?_

DAD: It's a big world out there, son, full of all sorts of people. What about you? What sort of person are you going to be?

_Hey, whoa, slow down there, daddy-guy. I'm still trying to get my head around this whole personal-appearance unpleasantness. Anyway, I haven't met that mother-thing yet and, no offense, she seems a lot less pushy than you. Aren't you kinda hogging the bonding time here?_

You're just --

MOM: James? James... Something's... Something's...

DAD: Catherine? Catherine!

_Hey, easy! Don't shake like that! You can slow down that heartrate of yours too while you're at it. I'm starting to get worried._

She's in cardiac arrest! Start compressions! Get the baby out of here! Move, move!

_Leggo! I said let go! I wanna see my mother! Mother! Dad! Mom! This crazy lady's taking me away! Do something!_

One one thousand, two one thousand. Come on! Hang on, Catherine! Hang on...

_Somebody, do something! Help me!_

_

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	2. Foreword into the Past

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July 2, 2376

This story is not about me. It ended before I was born and I have no active part in its events. I am a historian, not a hero. That's how it should be. This work is meant to be a historical record, not an opportunity to stroke my own ego. It was my hope –

Damn you kids, stop making that racket! I don't care. It's not for another two days! What? No, I'm very busy right now and don't have time for . . . What? You come back here and say that! Hey! Hey!

Unbelievable. The nerve of them. Setting off fireworks in the middle of town. Fireworks! Where the hell did they even find them? I hope they haven't been sneaking into the weapons cache. I don't dare think what the alderman would do if he found out his gunpowder was being used to fill bottlerockets. Hmm. Not my problem anyway. If Wallace catches them he'll tan their hides, and it'll serve them right. Of all the silly things they could decide to do, they choose to make explosions in celebration of a country that died three hundred years ago. Like the Visigoths dancing on the ruins of Rome. Heh, that's a pretty good line. I'll need to squeeze that in somewhere. I'm glad I'm recording this.

Anyway, where was I? Oh damn, I don't remember where I left off. Let me stop th–

. . .

Well, I don't remember where I was going before, so maybe I should start fresh. My name is Paul Gellar, but that's of no importance. I'm a historian and proud of it. There are those in this world who rank historians just below professional shit-shovelers in the hierarchy of useful occupations. A lot of them are in charge of this town, sadly. When I first showed up here about two years ago, the town fathers made their opinion of me quite clear. They offered me an arrangement: they'd mind their business so long as I minded my own. It was a deal doomed to failure, of course, since a historian needs to immerse himself in other people's business just to do his job. There's no need to go into detail about the frictions that followed. Let's just say that we all came at last to a mutually beneficial compromise and then got the hell away from each other. Life's been pretty good ever since.

I came to the Capitol Wasteland in search of a myth. The exploits of John Edgar Gray, the Lone Wanderer, traveled inexorably up the Potomac and north to my old stomping grounds in the Commonwealth. I was doing some work for the Institute at the time as an adjunct professor of late American history. It was a good job, if not particularly taxing, and it beat the hell out of scavving in the Plantations. In the Institute, though, there's not a lot of turnover among the senior posts; the joke in the staff room goes "Tenured professors never die, they just program computers to give their lectures for them." I was stuck in a paperwork oblivion. Then I heard about the Lone Wanderer.

There wasn't much to hear at first, just a stray anecdote or two – something along the lines of "Hey, hear about what happened down south?" followed by what I at first assumed was some garbled tale of wasteland superheroism. The first few times I dismissed the stories out of hand. They still kept popping up, though; the students, the lower rungs of the faculty, even the custodial drones were eventually filling the halls with fables about the mystical Mister Gray. There had to be some sort of fire beneath all that smoke (and it wasn't like I had anything else to do), so almost on a lark I submitted a grant request to conduct a historical investigation concerning, as I put it, "the events surrounding the so-called Project Purity."

In less than twenty-four hours my grant was approved. I felt like a super mutant had clubbed me over the head with a sack full of caps. I began my hunt in the Institute libraries, mostly because I lacked any better place to start. I was therefore shocked – truly, absolutely dumbfounded – to find a record of a firsthand encounter with Gray written by the hallowed Dr. Zimmer himself! Oil in a diamond mine, that's what it was, the sort of primary source a historian would kill to lay hands on.

Dr. Zimmer had run across Gray in some place called Rivet City. Apparently he had run into trouble with one of his experiments and... Well, we'll get to that in due time. I don't want to give away all the good parts before the story even starts. Point is, I finally had a solid lead. I had a place to start looking, this Rivet City. Now all I needed was a way to get there alive.

I did get there, finally. How I did it and the things I saw along the way could fill a few holotapes in themselves, but those will have to wait for the next grant. Unfortunately, Rivet City wasn't much help to me. I suppose it was too much to ask that there be some sort of living memory of events that occurred nearly a century before, but they might have at least left a note behind! There was plenty of information on Project Purity, more than I could ever use, but not a word about Gray anywhere in the voluminous Science Lab files. Even the local museum, the grandiosely named Capitol Preservation Society, had no information – no information, on a man who allegedly filled its archives single-handed! I gave the floating rustpile the back of my hand and headed out into the wastes, daring my luck to pull me through.

This is dragging on too long already, and those damn kids are coming back, so I'll try to wrap this up. I spent the better part of the last three years scouring every godforsaken inch of this manmade desert for any information I could find about Gray or the people that knew him. I made this little town my base of operations and settled in for the long haul. Over time I accumulated a great deal of data, but most of it was second- or thirdhand and much was garbled by time and faulty memories. I began compiling what I had into a digestible work. Slowly things began to wrap themselves up in the most unfulfilling way possible. More than once during this time I fantasized about just dropping everything and running off down south to the prime bottom land, to set up shop as a potato baron or as a high-rolling punga farmer.

Three weeks ago I met a man outside of Arefu. This man gave me an old-style solid-state drive. On this drive was the actual memories of John Edgar Gray himself, somehow recorded from his brain. I can't tell you who the man was or how he got ahold of such a thing or how such a thing even exists. I promised never to tell so I could get the drive. Even if I did tell, who'd believe me? I have a friend in this town who's a real tech whiz, and he helped me cobble together a machine that could access this stone-age relic. The information I saw on the screen then... It was genuine, every word of it. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind. I don't know if there are words to describe what happened to me then. If Zimmer's memoir had been oil in a diamond mine, this was opening your front door and seeing God on the doorstep. I was at peace. The truth of John Edgar Gray would finally be known through his own thoughts.

And then, of course, as soon as I try to transcribe the thing, the antiquated technology shits the bed and I lose upwards of ninety percent of the data. My friend tells me that some of it might be salvageable but he's making no promises. Maybe it's for the best. I saw the thing. I read it through once before it died. There was nothing really new in it (which was a good sign of its authenticity) but it helped fill a few of the holes that remained in the narrative. I admit I was looking forward to having the computer do all the grunt work. Shame.

Well, perhaps it's a case of hubris being well-paid. Since John Edgar Gray can no longer speak for himself, it's up to me to speak for him in the best way I know how.

Here goes nothing.

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